


do you like me?

by onlyangels



Series: jeremy heere’s deteriorating mental health [2]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Dissociation, Gen, Intrusive Thoughts, Mental Health Issues, Suicidal Ideation, Vague mentions of child neglect, umm i’m projecting again, vague mentions of self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 06:31:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17299529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlyangels/pseuds/onlyangels
Summary: In which memories pull Jeremy out from the depths instead of pulling him further in for once.





	do you like me?

**Author's Note:**

> This is unedited and probably awful considering the fact that I hate it.  
> Uh, comments? Very much appreciated considering they’re the only thing letting me know that people genuinely enjoy my work.

Sometimes when the world got to be too much and his father forgot to buy groceries and Jeremy’s wallet was empty, he would go outside. His backyard was a creaky wooden terrace with creamy stairs that led down to a tiny patch of green. A soft spot in the drainage that was his corner of New Jersey. Fuck New Jersey. 

(Who wants to live somewhere you can’t even pump your own gas? How fucked is that?)

Stop. Back track. No time to focus on gasoline when all he could think about was how he could maybe use it to light himself on fire, just to feel something. 

Jeremy grabbed at the grass, the sun was a blanket on his cheeks and the ground wrapped him in warm morning dew. The sensations weren’t enough to keep him away from the haze. He craved something more, more real. 

His arms begged him for relief. Some kind of a sign that he was alive. He gripped the grass tighter. He pulled it out in chunks and let them drop back down. Refusing to give into the urge to take the blades out of a disposable razor, and let his hands make work of his veins. He secretly hoped the next time he gave in, that he’d bleed out, spilling onto the tile on his bathroom floor. Normal right? His craving was gnawing at his head and god, it stung. 

Jeremy watched the sky as the clouds soared by and his eyes began to tear when a realization hit. 

He wanted so badly, so badly to die. 

His days were numbered anyways, right? Right? What would it matter if he cut them a bit shorter? 

Who would care? 

Not his dad, no, he couldn’t even be bothered to get up in the morning, let alone take Jeremy to get groceries, or to his much needed psychiatric appointments. Jeremy knew, he knew that no one would give a shit if he died. What did it matter when tearing at grass and choking on heavy, hot air was not enough to remind him he was alive? 

He let himself into the haze, let himself have that reprieve from the anxiety, for the craving. Craving. Craving. 

Christine. 

-

Christine when she had pulled him into her world of constant movement. He had been so used to standing still, being comfortable, that he hadn’t realized what Michael had been pushing all along by simply existing in his loud, too loud way. Movement had meaning. Staying still was paralyzing and only increased his anxiety. Having Christine come and ruin his comfort zone, destroy the walls he held on his structure, it had given him that meaning. Something he needed within himself? Sort of. He realized that he had been missing that stretch, that expansion of his experiences. 

All he could say was that she had done so much for him, just by existing in his presence, than he could ever explain. She could pull him out of his haze, she did so often, she even said the things Jeremy didn’t know he needed to hear at the strangest times, 

Christine leaned her head back onto the stage floor, she laughed softly, turning to Jeremy. (It was a week before Jeremy wandered to his backyard, she had pulled him into the auditorium for a chat before the weekend started).

“You are something else, you just - just amaze me,” She sounded so genuine, it had to be a lie, forced through her teeth, she was an actress after all. Stop. She doesn’t hate anyone. 

Why would anyone think that? Shut up. 

Jeremy smiled, his kept his thoughts behind his eyelids. They kept chatting on the stage, enjoying their lighthearted debate about their favorite productions done by the local theatre. It was so terrifyingly normal. As soon as Jeremy left the rows of shitty velvet seats and Christine, Christine with her wide smiles and tight hugs, he felt completely enveloped by the haze. 

His eyes looked behind him, blurry. He pulled at the cuffs of his cardigan and tried so desperately to ground himself back into reality. Just for a moment. He needed some clarity. Please. 

He didn’t get any. Jeremy felt his legs carry him out of the school and into the humidity of early June. 

He thought back to a couple months earlier, walking in the rain, contemplating his failures, his disastrous impact on others. Remembering how he and Michael had finally, finally, found peace in the splinters that had formed around their relationship. Christine was the first step to his, their, healing, he could admit that now. 

Christine had held his hand, she’d been there, held his hand and held him steady. He let her hold him up when he was fixing his friendship with Michael. She didn’t stop holding his hand when she realized she couldn’t love him like he loved her. 

She loved him still, just with a different type of ache. Because that’s what love is, isn’t it? An ache in the body? In the soul? 

-

Back in his corner of New Jersey, Jeremy really couldn’t help but let his mind wander away from Christine. Her excited smiles, bear hugs, and the way she stuck with Jeremy through the thick and thin leading to now. He let his thoughts melt to someone else. 

Someone he loved, who was an asshole in such an endearing way that it made Jeremy’s heart skip. 

Pathetic. Go back to thinking about dying? Maybe? 

The haze cleared for a moment. Letting him keep his focus on Michael. Michael. 

-

“Do you like me Micah?” Jeremy whispered into the darkness, he didn’t expect an answer. His breathing was evening out, his eyes fluttering, when Michael responded. 

“I like you a lot more than you think, a lot more.” Jeremy fell asleep with that, feeling guilty, like he wasn’t supposed to hear the response. 

The morning they were half wrapped in each other, Jeremy eyed Michael, his lips had a smudge of dried saliva. His cheek was pressed at an uncomfortable angle, and his hair was in a state of distress. Jeremy smiled fondly. He could spend hours looking at him. Admiring the curve of his jaw, the sparkle of his - 

Shut up. 

Jeremy looked up at the ceiling where glow in the dark stars littered it in complete randomness, a remnant of their childhood. He distinctly began to miss the ignorance of his childhood. Now he looked back and sometimes started to shake. Jeremy’s memory was always faulty, but now it came with hazy ghosts of his mother’s hands, a police car, a broken lip, a social worker, and his doctor giving him his infant vaccinations at age ten. His mother couldn’t be bothered with pumping her child full of life saving drugs. He refused to think about her anymore. Refused. His father gave up a long time ago, he realized his son was long gone. Jeremy wished Michael would realize he wasn’t worth it either. 

He wished Michael would leave him so that when the days got dark, he could slip into final oblivion, with guilt. But no, Michael liked him, wanted him around, god knows why, but he did.

Jeremy was eternally grateful. 

He let himself be dragged into sleep, hearing Michael start to snore (and god, he shouldn’t find that endearing should he?), and awaited the sun’s rise on another day filled with Jeremy’s beating heart. He wished it would stop beating, but, but, maybe later, when Michael wasn’t around. 

Once upon a time, Jeremy mocked Michael’s vinyl collection. Now, he sat at the player, letting the marbled disk spin as music poured into Michael’s basement. The sun had risen, and Jeremy had promptly been torn out of his sleep as Michael sleepily tried to wrap his arms around his torso. 

He had torn himself away and found solace in listening to some of Michael’s indie bullshit and - 

Fuck, Jeremy was crazy. He couldn’t keep his head grounded in the present. He dreamt of “once upon a time”, over and over again, until it skipped faster than Michael’s record pl - 

Fuck.

The needle had scratched the record, the music began to skip, the softness of the song turned into repeated whines. 

Michael shifted in his sleep. Jeremy picked up the needle and rushed to give the record a once over. Seeing no damage (It was ass o’ clock in the morning and the sun was barely out, he had to have missed something? Right?) he stuffed it into its casing and into the basket filled with other worn records, used lovingly by one Michael Mell. Organized more meticulously than his video game collection. 

Jeremy felt the haze overtake his nostalgia again. The soft memories of early morning music and his favorite person, evenly breathing nearby. 

He felt at peace knowing that Michael was breathing. 

So, even as the haze brought him back to a twisted sense of reality, into his backyard in New Jersey, he had stopped pulling at the grass. The air had stopped being heavy. Jeremy found he could breathe easy again. 

Had it really only take the thought of those he loved to clear his mind? 

A voice in his head wanted to scream abuse at him, tell him how he didn’t deserve to be loved. He wanted to believe it, it would be easier. 

But he wouldn’t lie to himself anymore. Heavy air and scars on his arms wouldn’t take away the memories that brought him back. He could bring himself back. He was better than the screaming, better than his self hatred. Something in his head started to form. Something brightly colored. 

Jeremy couldn’t quite identify it yet, but it was sure to be better than the cravings from before, better than his muddled headspace. 

Christine. 

Michael. 

He wanted to scream thank you to his memories for once, for the peace, instead of the pain.


End file.
